Staffordshire Moorlands councils connect_FOSS [PDF]

new benefits. Staffordshire Moorlands. District Council (SMDC) generated significant efficiencies in 2006 with the roll-

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Idea Transcript


LGDC

local government delivery council

Staffordshire Moorlands

update

Councils Connect

contents

1

Staffordshire Moorlands Councils Connect

4

2

new benefits

5

3

service developments

6

4

new partners

8

5

changes to governace

9

6

challenges going forward

10

7

next steps

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Staffordshire Moorlands 1 Councils Connect The recognition that a small district council does not have the resources to implement grand schemes but does have the flexibility to make things happen quickly, saw Staffordshire Moorlands District Council join forces with Staffordshire County Council and a range of key public sector service providers, including the Police and Jobcentre Plus to develop the three one-stop shops that comprise the Councils Connect project. Situated in Leek, Cheadle and Biddulph, the main conurbations of Staffordshire Moorlands, the Councils Connect one-stop shops serve 95,000 people across the district, fielding 170,000 enquiries on an annual basis. There are also five access points or kiosks where customers can self-serve via online services in more remote areas. Strong leadership, high-quality staff, relationship building, trust and shared customer relationship management (CRM) and IT systems are the key success factors of this project whose value is attested to by the 100% customer satisfaction ratings the project consistently achieves. FOSS Case Study, May 2007

4

new benefits 2

Staffordshire Moorlands District Council (SMDC) generated significant efficiencies in 2006 with the roll-out of its contact centre, one-stop shops (OSS) and the development of front office administration of services (for example, housing benefit notifications etc). SMDC released £300,000 through these changes.

CRM data is proving extremely useful and valuable to the authority as a management tool. For example, the data enables the authority to better manage peaks and troughs in services such as re-cycling.

SMDC has since released a further £50,000 in efficiencies from its ongoing work. These savings were the direct result of moving work from the back office to the front office, and through leveraging the data from the CRM system (see ‘service developments’).

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3 service developments

Some of the benefits that have arisen from moving work from the back to the front office include the digitisation of the authority’s planning records and streamlined access to land charge information. Previously,the Land Charges Department used to send paper copies of information to the Planning and Building Control officers. Customer service advisors can now log in to the system and deal with enquiries themselves. This has released part of a post from Land Charges. SMDC has a policy of no redundancies, and the officer moved to a role in Property Services that had been vacated by an officer retiring. SMDC is also making greater use of the data gathered by its CRM. For example, by mapping the data geographically, SMDC has been able to identify potential claimants for housing benefits. By identifying streets with a high proportion of claimants, SMDC can target campaigns at specific households in the same street that may also be eligible but are not yet claiming. In these recessionary times, ensuring those entitled to benefits are claiming is one means of bringing money into the area. Benefits claimants are likely to spend the money in local businesses.

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Over and above these developments, SMDC is looking beyond its OSS as a means of responding to customer needs. SMDC is seeking to re­ invigorate face-to-face contact by facilitating activities that add value such as signposting customers to complementary services, and encouraging networking between service providers. For example, SMDC has seen a significant rise in benefits claims. The customer service advisers at the one-stop shops can readily refer new claimants to staff from Jobcentre Plus and the Pension Service that are also located at the facility. SMDC is also in discussions with HMRC about relocating staff to its onestop shop in Leek. People of a pensionable age often have tax questions, as do people who have been made redundant. Co-locating these services allows people to get access to the advice and information they need at the one site.

The co-location of Cheadle OSS with the Library and fact that all three OSS are also UK Online Centres led to an unexpected discovery. The customer surveys revealed that 5% of facilities users were from South East Asia. Residents from Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines were using the PCs to communicate with people back home. The information means that SMDC can begin to think about the specific needs of these groups and how to reach these groups with services they are eligible for. Increasingly, SMDC is seeking to proactively reach out to customer groups to better understand its local communities and identify potential local issues. The community safety and community partnership teams are going out to village halls and local schools to engage residents and take the services to them. Another example of how SMDC has changed how it now works to better reach out to its customers is the work the authority carried out to analyse its CRM data. In one case, staff identified a number of enquiries in one ward relating to blocked gullies that were causing frequent localised flooding. However, to understand the problem fully SMDC officers visited the scene to review the situation with local residents before addressing the causes.

Furthermore, SMDC is enabling staff from the joint Pension Service team – currently based in Leek – to use all three one-stop shops as bases from which to work remotely. Using the facilities to hot desk will enable team members to work in certain areas on certain days, maximising their use of time.

Figure 1. Distance travelled to a one-stop shop. Red dots represent customers travelling to Leek, green to Cheadle and blue to Biddulph

The one-stop shops enjoy a customer satisfaction rating of 98%. The previous rating was 100%, but SMDC deliberately increased the sample size to help identify further opportunities for improvement. SMDC is working with the voluntary sector and Leek Community College to develop the IT skills of local residents. Central to the delivery of this programme was the use of the e-Bus, a bus equipped with satellite broad band and a suite of PCs, that toured the rural areas offering customers access to the web, and encouraging them to attend training sessions at the college on how to use the technologies. In addition SMDC used seed funding to encourage training in the communities and to give people skills in use of the IT services. The objective is to develop the capacity of the community to use the web, and encourage a culture change in the way people interact with the council.

“Staffordshire Moorlands was keen to promote the availability of its services to the village and organised a drop-in event during one morning to show the parish what was on offer and the various ways in which people in the village could access these services. Strategic use of the e-bus helped raise awareness about the opportunities for online access and, with the help of Leek College, these initiatives have helped to provide local people with the knowledge and skills necessary to make the most of the web.” Sue Lake – Chairman, Alstonfield Parish Council 7

5 new partners

In addition to council staff delivering police services at the Biddulph office, police surgeries are now run at Leek and Cheadle too, and Jobcentre Plus is now present at all three sites. SMDC is discussing with HMRC about locating staff in its Leek one-stop shop. SMDC has also entered into a strategic alliance with High Peak District Council (HPDC) (for further information see ‘next steps’ below).

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changes to governance 6

Despite a change in political administration at the last election, there is continuing commitment to SMDC’s initiatives around customer services. The new administration maintained the role of portfolio holder that champions customer services, and there is a desire to continue making progress.

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7 challenges going forward

Culture remains a major challenge. You need to understand the culture of your organisation and be open and up-front about what you want to achieve and to engage with staff across the organisation to keep them informed. An example of this is when working with the county council. The county is an order of magnitude larger, employing 30,000 staff. By contrast, SMDC employs 400 people. As a consequence, the culture and ways of working contrast and this can impede progress.

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next steps 8

As a result of the success of the e-Bus SMDC is in discussions with a higher education provider and Staffordshire Police to develop a multi-purpose mobile facility that can tour the district. SMDC is entering into a strategic alliance with High Peak District Council in Derbyshire. The two district councils now have a shared chief executive, and are aligning management structures. From the customer perspectives, there are potential benefits. For example, in some rural areas of Staffordshire Moorlands – such as the village of Longmor – customers can reach Buxton in High Peak much more readily than any of the towns in Staffordshire. Residents of these areas may even have Derbyshire postcodes, and hence GPs based in Derbyshire. Their local supermarket is Morrisons in Buxton.

Hence, the two authorities are seeking to enable customers to use the facilities of the adjoining district. The vision is to enable customers to raise a benefits claim or pay a bill etc in the facility closest to them, regardless of authority. However, there are challenges. Despite their proximity, the two districts are in different counties, and in different government regions (SMDC is in the West Midlands, while High Peak DC is in the East Midlands).

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